Last Goodbye
by ficmuse
Summary: Izzie is devastated by the loss of Denny. Can George help her through her grief?


TITLE: Last Goodbye

FANDOM: Grey's Anatomy

RATING: M

EPISODE: Begins after the season 2 finale

PAIRINGS: George/Izzie; implied Denny/Izzie; implied George/Callie

this is our last goodbye  
i hate to feel the love between us die  
but it's over  
just hear this and then i'll go  
you gave me more to live for  
more than you'll ever know –Jeff Buckley

Izzie is, by anyone's standards, a gorgeous girl. But the most beautiful thing about Izzie is her smile. It lights up her whole face and fills her eyes. Since Denny's death, her eyes have been blank. She glides listlessly from room to room, and if you ask her if she's okay, she'll smile and tell you she's fine. But she's not fine. She's just the ghost of herself.

Meredith and Cristina tell me that I need to give her space. Burke suggests the name of a psychologist at Seattle Grace that I could refer her to. But every day, she gets a little thinner, and a little more faded, and I can't help but worry.

I don't know how to fix her. She truly loved Denny; I know that grief will take time to heal. All I know is that she won't eat; won't bathe; won't sleep; won't talk. When I get home from work, she's sitting in the same place on the couch, wearing her nightgown, with that empty look on her face. It looks like she hasn't moved in twelve and a half hours. It's been three weeks since Denny died, and she hasn't left the house.

"Come on, Iz." I grasp both of her hands and help her to her feet. "Enough is enough."

I lead her up the stairs to the bathroom. "I promise not to peek," I tell Izzie as I fill the tub. "But you have to clean up. You smell like my high school gym socks."

She blinks. "I'm okay," she says slowly. She lifts her arm and smells. "Uck."

"Told you so."

She turns away from me and pulls her nightgown over her head. Her hair falls against her bare back, and I try to keep my eyes from her naked butt. She steps into the tub and I close the glass door so she has some privacy.

"Should I go?" I ask.

"Okay," she says. I head to my bedroom and start playing Tetris on my Game Boy. After a few minutes have passed, I hear her calling my name. When I open the bathroom door, she opens the glass door and looks over at me. "Can you help me with my hair? It's really tangled." She holds up a tangled end and waves it at me.

"Sure," I tell her. I grab a comb and the bottle of conditioner, and sit next to the tub as I pick out the snarled knots in her hair. She leans back and I can see her breasts, which are lovely, and her ribcage, which is worrisome. She has lost a lot of weight that she couldn't afford to lose.

It's a matted mess. It kind of reminds me of grooming Scout, the Irish setter that we had when I was growing up. I finally finish detangling her hair and rub more conditioner into her scalp. "Oh, that feels nice," she sighs. "You have strong hands, George."

"That's what all my women say." She makes a noise that is almost, but not quite, a snort.

"Can you wash my back?" she asks. "I can't reach between my shoulder blades."

"Sure." I take the washcloth and gently clean her off.

"I'm ready to get out. Can you hand me a towel?"

I grab a towel from the bar on the wall and hold it out for her, closing my eyes. She takes it from me with a rustle. "It's safe to look," she tells me. She looks pink, squeaky clean, and much more like herself.

"I was thinking that you'd maybe like some breakfast?"

"I'm…hungry." She looks surprised.

"I'll see you in the kitchen in a few minutes then."

In the kitchen, I take a look at the contents of our fridge. We have some rotting produce, which I toss, and some really questionable cheese, which I keep. There are some nice fresh peaches, so I pull those out of the crisper and put them in the fruit bowl on the counter.

Izzie sits down at the table as I rummage through the cupboards, pulling out a measuring cup and a mixing bowl. "It's been a while, but I like to cook." I glance over my shoulder, and see Izzie staring out the window.

"I don't know what to do next," she says softly.

"What's next is breakfast," I remind her. "The only thing you have to figure out right now is what you want to eat."

"You make it all seem so simple."

"Life is complicated," I admit. "But breakfast is easy."

She turns and looks at me. "Pancakes," she says. "That's what I want."

"I can make those," I assure her. I'm flipping the last one onto a platter when the front door opens.

Meredith appears in the doorway, looking tired. "Something smells really good. "

I bow. "I am a Renaissance man. I suture, I kick ass at Tetris, and I cook."

"I had no idea you cooked, George," Meredith says as she pulls up a chair next to Izzie.

I shrug. "I thought home ec would be a good way to meet some girls."

"How'd that work out for you?" Izzie asks.

I divvy up the pancakes onto three plates, and manage to get them to the table without dropping any. "I got my first girlfriend that way. I won her heart with my stuffed French toast."

Meredith passes me the syrup. "I'm going to see my mother tonight, for that family dinner thing. I'm almost hoping that I get paged and have to go to the hospital."

"I second that. I'm going to my folk's house for dinner tonight," I mention. "It's going to be awful. My brother Jerry and his wife just found out they're having their first kid, so it's going to be a whole lot of baby talk."

Meredith laughs, the corners of her eyes crinkling. "Uncle George! You'll be a fun uncle, the kind that buys the dangerous toys for Christmas."

"But, I'll be able to stitch them up when the dangerous toys injures them, so that'll all balance out."

"You should cook more, George." Meredith stands up and puts her plate in the sink. "That was delicious." She pats my shoulder and heads upstairs.

"That really was delicious," Izzie agrees.

"Do you want to go for a walk, get some fresh air?" I ask. "It's supposed to be a nice day out."

We walk together up the hill towards Kerry Park. Izzie keeps her head down, and her hair blows slightly in the wind. The park is quiet, with one lone guy sitting on the viewpoint. It's a beautiful clear day. You can see so much of Seattle from here, and today you can see Mount Rainier in the distance. We sit down on the bench, and watch the skyline.

"Do you know, I couldn't wait to leave Seattle," I admit. "I wanted to get as far away from here as possible. I didn't wanted to be little Georgie anymore, whose dad drives the beer truck and whose mom is Mrs. O'Malley who teaches at St. Benedicts'. But I went to Oregon for med school and I was so homesick. So I came back."

"When I was growing up, I used to lie on my bed and dream about where I'd live when I was a doctor in Seattle," Izzie said.

I take her hand, and she turns to look at me. "And you made it, Iz. You worked hard to get here. And it's not too late to go to the Chief and straighten things out."

"I don't deserve to have a dream, not anymore." Her voice cracks with emotion. "If I hadn't cut the LVAD wire, Denny would still be alive."

"You don't know that," I argued. "If you hadn't cut the LVAD wire, he may have died before another heart came up on UNOS. Or something else could have gone wrong, something we couldn't have seen coming. He was a high risk patient, Izzie. So many things could have killed him."

Izzie covers her face with her hands. "I killed him, George. I killed the only man I ever loved." She sobs, her back heaving as she cries. I hold her in my arms as she sobs. It's horrible to see her in this kind of pain.

"You have to forgive yourself, Iz. You have to forgive yourself, and let him go."


End file.
